YOU HAVE A PURPOSE!
(Preached on Sunday, January 16, 2005)
God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. -I Corinthians 1:9
“But I don’t want to be a priest or a monk, I want to be a pharmacist!” Brian was a college student objecting to the notion that becoming a Christian meant giving over your entire life to God. “If I were to give all my being to God,” he said to the other members of the dormitory Bible study, “then it seems to me that I would have to give away all my possessions, and devote myself to God. I’d have to become a monk, or a priest, or a preacher. I don’t want to do that.”
Like Brian, most people are not too comfortable with the notion that God has called them.
We tend to think of a “calling” as something that happens to people who are meant to be ordained ministers or missionaries or even lay leaders.
We tend to equate “call” with “church” and that it has something to do with special holiness in life.
I believe that each of us, in fact, has two calls.
One that is the same for all of us and one that is particular to each one of us.
The first call is the one we respond to through baptism.
It is the call which Paul reminds the Corinthians about, the call to be “saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
What does it mean to be a “saint?”
It doesn’t primarily refer to ethical behavior on my part, how good one is.
It speaks rather to one’s relationship to the One who is holy — God.
The concept “holy” has nothing to do with how “good” or “bad” one is by rather on the fact that one is set aside for a special, divine purpose.
Thus, one can have a “holy vessel” solely for ritual use; a “holy temple” set apart for the singular purpose of worshiping God; or a “holy people” who have a divine function beyond the secular.
Drawing on this well-established Hebrew understanding, Paul tells the Corinthians, and us, that through our baptism, through our relationship with Jesus, we have been “sanctified,” that is, “made holy”.
We have been brought into a special relationship with God and made useful for God’s purposes.
This doesn’t refer to a change in our ethical makeup, although that may well happen, but to a change in our relationship to God.
Because God has claimed us through our baptism we have become vessels set apart for divine purposes.
What is that divine purpose for our lives?
It is not so much to do something differently, but to do all the things that everyone else in the world does, but in a different way.
That is what it means to be a follower of Jesus the Christ.
It means to take Jesus’ teachings seriously.
This is a lifelong pattern, once we offer the entirety of our lives to God.
Becky Manley Pippert made an astute observation in her book, Out of the Saltshaker, when she said that, as Christians, we are not teachers or doctors or store clerks or students, but disciples of Christ, and saints of God, cleverly disguised as teachers, doctors, clerks and students.
We are called by God to be divine presence in the world.
So our work matters, but not only as a use of time and talent and energy, but as a way to help other’s experience the love, grace and mercy of God.
Basically, what all this means is that God simply calls me to throw my whole self into following Christ, and really, it’s as bedrock as the call of Love to love.
Jesus’ message is that God’s compassionate love is always, unconditionally, available.
Jesus summons me to share that love with every person I meet, especially with those for whom Jesus had a soft spot — the poor, the marginal, the difficult-to-love.
In other words, all those I am culturally or personally predisposed to keep at a distance.
Such love is no easy task.
It stands opposed to nearly everything society teaches about what it means to be someone, to go somewhere, to succeed; what it means to be powerful, to be rich, to be happy.
Where society tells us to “Seek your place in the world!” God calls us to “Seek the kingdom of God,” that is, the communities and places where God’s influence and will hold sway and guide people’s lives.
Where society tells us to “find yourself!” God calls us to “lose yourself and so find life.”
Where society calls us to “be your own self-made person! God calls us to become “members together of one body...”
Where society teaches us to “look to your own needs and interests!” God calls us to “have the attitude of Christ Jesus, who took on the nature of a servant.”
Where society promises “You can have it all!” God calls us to “consider it rubbish, that we might gain Christ.”
Where our society mandates “Be at the top of your game!” God calls us to “be crucified with Christ.”
Where society calls us to live for ourselves, God through Jesus calls us to live for others, and thus find ourselves.
When we perceive our existence as a call from God — rather than as a search for self — we free ourselves from the confusion of self-oriented ambition and find our ultimate purpose in life.
That’s where clarity is found — not in knowing what we are looking for, but in answering God’s call and living our lives under the protective guidance of Christ.
The best way to describe what this life of answering God’s call to be saints looks like is with a story.
Carol, a nurse in a large hospital, was on her lunch break.
She had just finished paying for her food and was heading to the corner of the cafeteria where her friends usually sat when something made her glance around the room.
That’s when Carol saw her.
She was sitting alone at a table which was meant to seat ten. Her head was bent low over her tray and her shoulders were rounded. She looked like was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Carol stood and stared.
There was something about that woman that seemed to touch Carol’s heart, and before she knew it she found herself standing beside her and asking, “May I join you?”
The woman nodded her head “Yes” and then she again bent her head over her tray.
“What am I doing here?” Carol asked herself, it was clear that the woman wanted to be left alone.
But for some reason Carol couldn’t do that. She knew she had to start up a conversation with this stranger.
It was hard work, but finally the woman began to open up.
Her name was Barb. Her 55-year-old husband was dying.
Both of them had been only children.
Their parents were dead.
They’d never had children of their own.
They had no close friends or family.
Barb had never worked outside the home.
When her husband died she wanted to die, too.
Carol was overwhelmed by Barb’s story.
She had to get back to her floor, but she didn’t want to leave Barb alone. They arranged to meet at the same table for her afternoon break. That chance meeting set the pattern for the rest of Carol’s working week.
On her last day of work, Carol knew that she had to take one more chance with her newfound friend.
“I won’t be here tomorrow,” she said. “But I will be going to church with my family. Why don’t you meet me there?”
Years later, Carol and Barb were reminiscing.
“Do you remember that day you sat down at the table in the cafeteria?” Barb asked.
When Carol nodded she, went on, “I saw God’s Spirit resting on you. I knew that God was answering my prayer to die by sending me a reason to live.”
To answer God’s call to each of us, to live our lives as saints, fulfilling God’s holy purpose for us, really is that simple.
It is just taking seriously the call to share and spread God’s love.
It begins by remembering as Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote some years ago, that “the first service that one owes to others in the [Christian] fellowship consist in listening to them. Just as love for God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for (brothers and sisters in Christ) is listening to them.”
Listening is undoubtedly one of the most loving things we can do for one another.
God only calls us to be who we are.
By God’s gift, our deepest identity is not really to be or to do anything but love.
We are, each of us, the uniquely individual container of God’s love in whatever particular context we live.
We live to serve that love, to give it expression.
As the apostle Paul tells us, that is the purpose for which God calls us in baptism.
And toward that end, God has sanctified us, that is, set us aside from normal, ordinary use, and God has enriched us in Christ, giving us the knowledge and the speech to know what to do, what to say, and when to say it and when to be quiet and just listen.
In the end, difficult as it is for us to live for others, we can do it, not because we are especially holy, or good, or special, but because God will strengthen us for that purpose and because we have each other on whom to lean.
Let us embrace one another, let us embrace God’s call in our lives, let us embrace our purpose of living for others and spread God’s love wherever we go, wherever we are.